


Smells Like Teen Spirit

by StilesBastille24



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: But Their Intensity Towards Each Other Is A++, F/M, Getting Back Together, Not a Perfectly Healthy Relationship, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 13:43:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16019126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StilesBastille24/pseuds/StilesBastille24
Summary: Days smear into weeks, then months, then years. Her baby brother never turns a day older. Her parents find resolution in the face of eternity spent together. And Violet keeps looking around corners for a flash of blonde hair.“He’s not good for you,” her mother says, brushing the hair delicately behind Violet’s ear.The question is, has Violet ever wanted what’s good for her?





	Smells Like Teen Spirit

**Author's Note:**

> So. Way back in the day, when I was still going home on weekends from college, I used to watch AHS: Murder House. And in those days of angst, I was a hardcore supporter of Violet and Tate. Does their relationship have a myriad of issues? Yes. Do I really care? Not that much. They are a fictional couple and I’m okay with them not being the perfect example of a healthy relationship. 
> 
> And while they aren’t my favorite AHS couple (looking at you Zoe & Kyle) they are still the first couple I loved on the show. So I wrote this about in tribute to that.

Growing up, Violet’s favorite fairytale was always Little Red Riding Hood. She loved the thrill of the wolf stalking Little Red through the dark forest. She loved that the closer Little Red got to Grandma’s Cottage the more danger she was in. She loved that Little Red looked into the face of evil and saw only her Grandmother. She loved when the wolf’s teeth flashed white and deadly and all Little Red could do was scream. 

The ending, Violet wasn’t as fascinated by. There was no thrill in the Woodsman cutting open the wolf and setting Little Red and her Grandmother free. There was no danger in the wolf being turned into a fur rug. And where was the fun if there was no danger? No monster waiting in the dark to eat you whole?

~*~*~*~ 

The day Violet met Tate, she stared right into the eyes of wolf and felt his breath on her cheek. She had never felt danger this close, not even when her razor cut into her skin.

Tate asked her if she was trying to kill herself. It was a stupid question. Death wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t scary, it wasn’t dangerous, it was final. Violet didn’t want to kill herself, she wanted to feel alive. 

She watched Tate lurk around the halls of her house, the big bad wolf stalking the forest. If Violet had ever thought about it, she wouldn’t have figured herself for Little Red. She had seen herself as the forest, the darkness that saw beauty in the monster that prowled within her cover. 

But maybe that’s how the house was different. The house had become the woods and Violet was only a lost little girl passing through on her way home.

~*~*~*~ 

In fairytales, there is only black and white. The wolf is evil, he does not have a soft underbelly that hides all he cares about. He doesn’t care, and that’s what was so alluring to Violet.

Tate is different. He is soft, in ways she didn’t expect. He seemed so hard at first, sharp edges like broken glass. But that’s not all he is. The night on the beach, Tate reveals how soft he is. Afraid of intimacy, scared of the high schoolers who come to harass them. 

Violet doesn’t want soft. She wants the Tate that sometimes scares her too much. The one who showed her horrible unimaginable things in the basement. The one who screamed after her, “I thought you weren’t afraid of anything.” 

Does that make her the wolf? Is she the one perusing the darkness in Little Red, taunting her to look into the eyes of a monster and swear she sees only her Grandmother? 

She doesn’t like it when he cries. She wants him to rail against the things that scare him, the things that make him angry. She wants to lead him into her woods and leave all the light behind.

~*~*~*~ 

Of course, in the end, she learns how wrong she was. How very perfectly Tate fulfilled the role of being a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He was always, always the Big Bad Wolf and she was so very stupid for looking right into his obsidian eyes and seeing only a little boy.

She let him lead her into the house with his big eyes, his gentle words. She let him lay her down on a patchwork quilt. She let him gobble her up. 

And along the way, he ate her mother too. And the life that her family had dreamed of. And the future Violet might have had. 

Unlike the fairytale, there is no Woodsman to cut her back out, to breathe life back into her lungs. She dead and so is her mother, trapped forever in the belly of the beast. 

She does, however, still get the chance to turn Tate into the fur rug long forgotten beneath her fiery hearth. When she tells him to go away, he becomes nothing more than an empty shell. A ghost in every sense of the word.

~*~*~*~ 

The days grow long in Murder House. Violet still finds herself peering down corridors waiting to see Tate just disappearing from sight. But that’s the thing about telling a ghost to go away, even their afterimage fades to dust.

Days smear into weeks, then months, then years. Her baby brother never turns a day older. Her parents find resolution in the face of eternity spent together. And Violet keeps looking around corners for a flash of blonde hair. 

“He’s not good for you,” her mother says, brushing the hair delicately behind Violet’s ear. 

The question is, has Violet ever wanted what’s good for her? 

She sits in the middle of the bed in her old room. The last owners had left without ever bothering to come back for their furniture. She fans out playing cards and thinks of that moment so long ago when Tate had mocked, “Hi, I’m Tate. I’m dead. Want to hook up? I don’t think so.” 

She wonders if even now he understands that he was wrong? Violet would have said yes. She would have looked into the eyes of danger and grinned a wolfish smile. 

There isn’t much of a story for Little Red if there is no Wolf dogging her ever step. And in this empty house, she feels she’s lost her way to Grandma’s house.

~*~*~*~ 

Her mother and father take her baby brother with them on Halloween. They begged Violet to join them, to go to the Halloween Fair, to have one day of being a normal family. Violet had declined. Halloween is the only day the house is utterly and completely empty.

After they leave, after the house groans its unease at being so abandoned by the spirits it traps inside its walls, Violet calls to him. 

“Tate?” Her voice echoes against the Victorian walls. 

When he appears, he’s just out of reach, a finger’s width from being within her touch. He tilts his head as he watches her, offering no greeting. 

“It’s Halloween,” Violet says. 

“So why are you still in the house?” Tate asks. 

She’s missed the sound of his voice. The way it can be so gentle one moment then a harsh scream the next. “My dad - he says you talk to him, sometimes.”

Tate shrugs. “There aren’t a lot of options to choose from here.” 

“My dad still blames you for everything that went wrong.”

“He’s not the one I want to forgive me.” Tate shifts away from her. He looks around the house like he hasn’t seen it every day since the day he died. He trails a hand across the fading wallpaper, turns his eyes to her with that look he’s perfected. The one that says he’s bored by everyone and everything he sees. 

“I wanted to hate you,” she tells him. “But I never did. My love for you was so strong it burned out anything else I might have felt.” 

“Was,” Tate points out. He tugs the sleeves of his green shirt over his hands. “Do you think the past exists here?” he asks. “Or are we caught in an eternal present?” 

They’re circling each other. When Tate steps left, Violet edges right. When she steps closer, he edges back. 

“Tell me what you did.” She drops her challenge at his feet and waits to see if he will pick it up. 

Tate stares at her, his dark eyes a mirror image of her own. He licks his bottom lip, sizes her up. “I fell in love with a girl,” he said. “Who wanted to play with fire. She wanted to feel the burn but not be consumed by it. She wanted to look into the darkness and see the monsters there, but she didn’t want to become the darkness.”

“I know who I am,” Violet tells him. “I’m asking who you are.”

“I fell in love with a girl,” he repeats. “She cast light on all of my shadows. I didn’t know there was nothing left of the light in me until she looked at me and saw nothing but a void where a person had once been.”

His words draw her in, a spider’s spinning web that glistens in the morning light, begging to be seen that much closer, until you find you are stuck within it, caught. “What was in the void?” she asks, dazzled and wanting more. 

“My life was fucked up way before I carried a gun to school. My family tapestry included an abusive mother, a father who abandoned me at six years old, a grotesquely disfigured brother who was kept locked in the attic, and a rage that drowned out everything. Absolutely everything.”

“So what did you do?”

“One day, I closed my eyes and dreamed of a fire. A fire that burned everything clean. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to burn everything clean. So I set my cheating, heartless step-father on fire. I thought it was symmetry. His own family burned to death so why shouldn’t he?” 

Tate’s looking at her straight on, daring her to look away. But she won’t, this is what Violet asked for. This is what she has been asking for since they met. The truth. The ugly, hideous, monstrous truth. 

“Then I went to school. If I was burning, I wanted the whole world to burn with me. I killed kids I went to school with. It wasn’t because I was bullied, it is wasn’t because I was misunderstood, it wasn’t because I didn’t have friends. It was because I hurt so badly inside, I wanted the world to hurt with me. I did it because I could. Because I hated everyone, everything, myself included. Do you hate me for that?”

“I blame you,” Violet answers. “I hold you responsible for an act of senseless hate and murder.” 

Tate nods, taking her blame and wearing it like a weight around his neck. Then he carries on, “I died in this house. I became twisted in this house. I had nothing. Just my anger and my loneliness. So I became friends with the other monsters in these walls. I punished the living for not being what I wanted. I killed the gay couple because they were supposed to have a child, one I would have killed to give to Nora Montgomery. I wanted her to be happy, I didn’t care who I hurt to do that.”

“Do you think that’s noble?” She says it spitefully. “Caring for one person at the expense of everyone else?”

Tate stares at her. “Monsters aren’t noble, Violet, they are demented. I’m a monster, that’s what I was before I died and it’s what I embraced after my death. It wasn’t noble. It was evil, and I reveled in it.” 

She shivers. This is the most honest Tate has ever been with her and it’s the most he has ever scared her. She’s never seen his teeth this sharp, blood still on his muzzle. “Tell me more,” she instructs. 

“I raped your mother. For Nora. She still wanted her baby. I was going to give it to her however I could. I used your mother and in the end, that killed her. I raped your mother and I kept circling closer to your light. Because I wanted it, I wanted you, like I had never wanted anything else in my life. I had never seen anything beautiful until I saw you. You made my entire existence turn upside down.”

It makes her sick, makes Violet’s skin crawl. What Tate did to her mother. The beast he made her carry in her womb. The fact that he had put on the heinous black costume and approached Violet with it too. It was disgusting. 

Violet roughly brushes away a tear that snakes down her cheek. “More than anything, I wanted to hate you for that.” 

He smirks, a gesture full of self-loathing. “You could never hate me as much as I hate myself. It would be a wasted emotion. No one has ever come close to hating me as much as I have always hated myself.” 

Tate shakes his head, his hands unclenching from his sleeves leaving them wrinkled and bunched together. “With you, I ruined everything before anything started. But still, I got to know you and I wanted to be better. I wanted to be someone who wouldn’t scare you in basements. I wanted to be someone who could protect you, who you could trust. So I lied to you, about everything I am.” 

“I would have loved you as a ghost, if you had told me,” Violet says. 

His eyes slide to hers. “I know that now. I couldn’t have before. I’ve been lying to myself for years about who I am and what I’ve done. I was always going to lie to you, no matter how I felt about you, even when I loved you. I haven’t been honest with myself in so long I didn’t know how to honest with anyone until recently.” 

“What changed?” She doesn’t want him to say it’s her. Because if the only way Tate can step away from the darkness is by binding himself to her, then there really is nothing of him left. 

“I talked to your dad. He yelled at me for being a liar. Told me I could never admit what I did. And I wanted to, for you, for me. I heard once, you can’t be loved until you love yourself first. I’m not there yet, I don’t think I’ll ever be, but I’m starting to hate myself a little less. Because I might be a monster, but at least I’m a monster who knows what he did, who can face it, instead of cowering from all of the awful things that made me a monster in the first place.” 

Tate looks out the window at the end of the hallway. The afternoon is slowly slipping into evening and pretty soon the house will fill back up with the ghosts that haunt it. 

“Does this mean you aren’t going to be a monster anymore?” Violet asks. 

Tate’s laugh is hollow. “I can’t stop being a monster, Violet. The things I did are never going away. You know that, it’s why you can’t forgive me, and it’s why I don’t deserve your forgiveness. But because I’m a monster, I’m selfish and I am always going to crave that forgiveness.” 

Violet steps closer to him, she presses the fingertips of her right hand to the straight angle of his cheekbone. “You scare me.”

“I should,” he agrees. His hands settle lightly at her waist, letting her know he likes her close but he’s not going to trap her there. “I don’t know how to love like a person. I only know how to love like a monster. To love you with a vehemence that wants to consume you.” 

She tilts his chin down toward her with her left hand. Around them, the walls of the house creak like trees in the wind. Violet smiles up at Tate. “I’ve got claws too, Tate. And I’ll use them on you if you lose your way in the woods again.”

Tate’s smile is a small flickering thing. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk to strangers in the woods?”

Violet nods. She pushes herself onto her tiptoes so she can rub her lips against his. “Mhm,” she hums. Violet thinks about Little Red Riding Hood, and decides maybe it’s time to write her own fairytale. 

She reaches out, pressing firmly down on the light switch so that the hallway is plummeted into darkness. “Funny thing about strangers in the woods, no one ever remembers that underneath her red cloak, Little Red Riding Hood was a wolf too.” 

In the dark, Tate’s smile is a flash of sharp white teeth before he grasps Violet by the thighs, lifting her up and wrapping her legs around his waist. She bites at his bottom lip, drawing a hint of blood that she licks up with a smile.

“My what big teeth you have,” she whispers in his ear. 

Tate laughs softly. “The better to eat you with, my dear,” he answers before his mouth closes over hers and she lets his fire consume them both.


End file.
